archive.Joe Lamantia.com

I’m very happy to announce that Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality – the latest installment of my column Everyware @UX Matters –  is live now.  (Timing is sometimes the writer’s friend, as I was at the Layar event Monday night here in Amsterdam just the day before, and had the chance to talk with some of their team.)

AR is more of a perspective and class of experiences than an instance of new technology, so I wanted to approach the subject from the specific perspective of user experience and interaction design.  Reactions from the augmented reality community are positive so far; Claire Boonstra of Layar, and no less than the inimitable Tish Shute of UgoTrade, have all been kind enough to recommend it.  Thanks to them and to everyone who’s tweeted and posted this one.

As we explore the role augmented reality will play in our gigantic experiment with everyware, we should keep in mind that the map is not the territory.  But there is no denying an effective map will surely help point the way as you try to find your way around a strange new country.

What happens when *everything* is designable? When the boundaries between humanity, technology, and the larger environment disappear? Designing Post-humanity: Everyware In the Far Future, the latest installment of my column on user experience and ubiquitous computing in UXmatters, takes a look at these questions. Post-humans, ubicomp, and science fiction may seem like strange territory for user experience professionals, but by considering these kinds of futures today, we make many important decisions about who we will [all!] be tomorrow.

**Update: Bruce Sterling just posted about it in his Beyond the Beyond blog at Wired. Thanks for noticing, Bruce!

Two quick updates on things happening other places.

First, the latest installment of Everyware: Designing the Ubiquitous Experience (my column for UXmatters) was published back in March. It explores the world of Vernor Vinge’s story Synthetic Serendipity from the experience design perspective. Vinge is justly reknowned as an SF author, but what makes Synthetic Serendipity worth reading closely is the dense collection of ideas it shares: augmented reality, wearable computing systems, a network-based co-creation economy open to all participation by people of all ages, the games vs. reality inversion, generational differences in adaptation to technological change, etc.

Mostly, I like Synthetic Serendipity as an entry point into the ubiquitous computing space because it presents a picture of the future from the viewpoint of an ordinary kid, who has ordinary concerns; go to school, play video games, stay out of trouble with friends.

In the companion piece in draft now, I look much further ahead, exploring scenarios that consider what happens when the boundaries separating humans from the environment blur and dissolve, and humanity itself becomes an object of design.

Second, and related, Jeff Parks just posted the podcast of a group discussion on ubiquitous computing that he organized at the IA Summit in Memphis. You’ll hear me along with Jeff, Steve Baty, Will Evans, Matthew Milan, John Tirmandi, Joe Sokohl, Todd Zaki Warfel as we share examples, ideas, and questions about the intersection of user experience and ubiquitous computing. Thanks to Jeff for making this happen – it was a fun session, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording it.

I’ve been focused on understanding future directions in the landscape of digital experiences recently (which nicely parallels some of the work I’ve been doing on design and futures in general), so I’m sharing a summary of the analysis that’s come out of this research.
This presentation shares an overview of all the major waves of change affecting digital experiences, some of the especially forward-looking insights around shifts in our identities, and the implications for those creating digital experiences.
The 8 waves discussed here (are there more? let me know!)

• Digital = Social
• Co-Creation
• Digital Natives
• Itʼs All a Game
• Take Away
• Everyware
• Convergence
• Seeing Is Believing

First Fictions and the Parable of the Palace is the inaugural installment of “Everyware: Designing the Ubiquitous Experience,” a column exploring user experience and design in the era of ubiquitous computing. ‘First Fictions’ considers the profound design implications of foundational visions of ubiquitous computing imagined by technologists such as Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, and finds precedent for these sorts of techno-social futures in the poetic parables of Jorge Louis Borges.

“Everyware” will be a journey through the expanding wavefront of the ubiquitous experience as it impacts design, covering topics ranging from ubiquitous computing to near-field communication, pervasive computing, The Internet of Things, spimes, ubicomp, locative media, and ambient informatics.

I hope it’s as good to read as it has been to write. And keep the comments flowing!

The other day, over a hot corned beef sandwich from the 2nd Avenue Deli, someone asked what I’m reading now. As usual, I ended up mumbling a few half complete book titles (not sure why, but I always have difficulty remembering on the spot – probably because I’ve got four or five things going at once…).

To help fill out the list, and because I’m still doing most of my writing via other outlets, here’s a snapshot of the books scattered around my house. It’s divided into helpful categories, including ‘Books I’d Like To Start Reading Soon, But Shouldn’t, Because I’m Still Reading Other Stuff’, and ‘Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read Sometime Soon, But Probably Won’t Won’t Get To In The Near Future.’

Books I’m Reading Now

• This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Daniel Levitin
• Critical Mass: How One Things Leads To Another. Philip Ball
• Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Adam Greenfield
• Pulse. The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things. Robert Fresnay
• The River Cottage Meat Book. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
• In Praise Of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire. Mike Davis

Books I’d Like To Start Reading Soon, But Shouldn’t, Because I’m Still Reading Other Stuff

• Maximum City. Suketu Mehta
• Atlas of Novel Tectonics. Reiser + Umemoto
• Failure: Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. Various
• Istanbul: Memories of A City. Orhan Pamuk
• Uncany Networks. Geert Lovink
• The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein

Books Recently Finished

• Sailing to Byzantium. Robert Silverberg
• A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisine. Anthony Bourdain
• The Laws of Simplicity. John Maeda
• Buda’s Wagon. Mike Davis
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Michael Pollan
• The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy. Sasha Issenberg
• The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. Mark Roberts, Jeff Vandermeer

Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read Sometime Soon, But Probably Won’t Get To In The Near Future

• A Thousand Plateaus. Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari
• Hackers and Painters. Paul Graham
• Leonardo’s Laptop. Ben Schneiderman
• Emergence. Stephen Johnson
• In The Bubble. John Thackarra
• The Direction of Cities. John Guinther
• Home: A Short History of an Idea. Witold Rybczynsk

Bonus: Things I’m probably Never Going to Start / Finish Reading

• Women Fire and Dangerous Things. George Lakoff
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I’m post­ing the abstract for my clos­ing talk at the Ital­ian IA Sum­mit, as well as the slides, below.

Hope you enjoy!

Abstract:

Broad cul­tural, tech­no­log­i­cal, and eco­nomic shifts are rapidly eras­ing the dis­tinc­tions between those who cre­ate and those who use, con­sume, or par­tic­i­pate. This is true in dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences and infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ments of all types, as well as in the phys­i­cal and con­cep­tual realms. In all of these con­texts, sub­stan­tial exper­tise, costly tools, spe­cial­ized mate­ri­als, and large-scale chan­nels for dis­tri­b­u­tion are no longer required to exe­cute design.

The ero­sion of tra­di­tional bar­ri­ers to cre­ation marks the onset of the DIY Future, when every­one is a poten­tial designer (or archi­tect, or engi­neer, or author) of inte­grated expe­ri­ences — the hybrid con­structs that com­bine prod­ucts, ser­vices, con­cepts, net­works, and infor­ma­tion in sup­port of evolv­ing func­tional and emo­tional pur­suits.

The cul­tural and tech­no­log­i­cal shifts that com­prise the oncom­ing DIY Future promise sub­stan­tial changes to the envi­ron­ments and audi­ences that design pro­fes­sion­als cre­ate for, as well as the role of design­ers, and the ways that pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs alike will design. One inevitable aspect con­se­quence will be greater com­plex­ity for all involved in the design of inte­grated expe­ri­ences.

The poten­tial rise of new eco­nomic and pro­duc­tion mod­els is another.

The time is right to begin explor­ing aspects of the DIY Future, espe­cially its pro­found impli­ca­tions for infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture and user expe­ri­ence design. Using the designer’s pow­er­ful fusion of ana­lyt­i­cal per­spec­tive and cre­ative vision, we can bal­ance spec­u­la­tive futur­ism with an under­stand­ing of con­crete prob­lems — such as grow­ing eth­i­cal chal­lenges and how to resolve them — from the present day.

Here’s the slides, avail­able from SlideShare:

My presentation slides from the Ethics Panel at EuroIA 2007 – titled Designing Ethically – Communicating Conflict: Design For the Integrated Experiences of the Future – are available from Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/moJoe. Ethics was a challenging and fascinating subject to take on, and it prompted some great discussion with the audience (even at 7pm, after a full day of sessions…)

Many thanks to fellow panelists Olly Wright and Thom Froehlich, and all who planned, organized, attended, spoke, volunteered, or otherwise contributed to EuroIA 2007. As you can see from the flickr photostream, it was worth the trip to Barcelona! I’m already looking forward to next year’s event in Amsterdam.

Here’s a quick description of the presentation:

“What does the future of design hold? Greater ethical challenges. In the coming world of integrated experiences, design will face increasing ethical dilemmas born of the conflicts between broader, diverse groups of users in social media; new hybrids such as the SPIME which bridges the physical and virtual environments simultaneously, and the DIY shift that changes the role of designers from creators of elegant point solutions, to the authors of elegant systems and frameworks used by others for their own expressive and functional purposes. To better prepare designers for the increased complexity, connectedness, and awareness included in the coming future, here are some practical suggestions for easily addressing conflict during the design of integrated experiences, by using known and familiar experience design methods and techniques.”